PDA

View Full Version : A Very Good Discussion going on about Libertarianism and Civil Rights




Sentient Void
05-22-2010, 11:54 AM
Although this article was initially about Rand Paul and his statements on the CRA, the article is mostly aimed at libertarian philosophy regarding it.

But the article is *not* what I'm bringing attention to here, so much. It's the discussion going on in the comments - which is very good and I'm surprised and happy to see so many intellectually defending libertarian philosophy... there's one especially good comment by someone named 'Rad Geek'...

***NOTE: BOLD IS WHAT HE IS QUOTING FROM THE ARTICLE/OTHERS***



I can’t speak for Rand Paul. I know that he believes in many things I consider to be stupid and immoral. But I think I can claim to have some passing familiarity with the libertarian philosophy.

Paul’s worldview — the libertarian, anti-government worldview — is that government can never be the solution. That government action is — always — the problem. That the wisdom of the market cures all.

That last bit about “the wisdom of the market cures all” sounds a lot more like what you’d like to argue against than what libertarians endorse. I know many libertarians who have overly rosy views of markets, and especially of business. But I don’t know of any libertarians who believe that individual freedom and market processes are some kind of automatic cure for all social ills. Certainly that doesn’t follow from the claims that came before it — opposition to governmental “solutions” to social problems is not the same thing as denying that social problems exist outside of government, or that anything done outside of government is, therefore, automatically OK.

It is perfectly possible to believe that government is always a problem without believing that it is always “the” problem — There’s no reason why a libertarian has to believe that every social evil derives from statism; the issue isn’t whether all evils come from government, but whether or not government is the right response. When you have a social evil, like (say) whitespread white supremacy in civil society, business and social institutions, etc., even outside of the scope of formal segregation laws, even when those evils don’t come from government, it may turn out that it’s still better to rely on non-governmental forms of social organization in order to undermine or dismantle them, rather than trying to address it through lobbying and electoral politics.

If you want evidence of why someone would believe that, well, there are many reasons, but the history of the Freedom Movement in the South is actually one of the best examples. Opponents of Jim Crow were continuously trying to get antidiscrimination acts through the legislature and to challenge segregation laws in court from 1875 until well into the 1970s (my high school wasn’t successfully integrated until 1973). These efforts at reform through governmental politics failed over and over again right up until the mid-1950s — when they were accompanied by a grassroots social movement that achieved its immediate goals by making repeated and heavy use of community organizing, social and economic pressure campaigns (marches, boycotts, strikes, mutual aid, sit-ins, Freedom Rides, etc.). What I’d argue is that the federal government’s (extremely tardy and extremely reluctant) embrace of desegregation was something forced on it by the struggles and victories of the social movement and the changes in public opinion that those struggles and victories made. Without the federal government there to stand around and take the credit, Jim Crow still could and would have been brought to its knees. By the people who did all the work and put their lives on the line to bring it to its knees — from the MIA and SCLC to CORE to SNCC to the countless local activists and organizers who risked and lost their lives in town after town all across the South. While white politicians like Bobby Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Banes Johnson, et al. repeatedly tried to tell them to stop marching, to call off public protests,to dial down local organizing and generally to stop making waves and acting like free people.

He’s perfectly okay with making life hard for those who aren’t white — as long as it’s only business, not government, making the difficulties.

I don’t know what Rand Paul thinks about that, but if this is intended as a general statement about what libertarians believe, it’s both wildly uncharitable and completely wrong.

Believing that government shouldn’t enforce a legal prohibition against segregation is not the same thing as being “perfectly okay” with segregation, any more than believing that fascists shouldn’t be imprisoned or tortured for their political beliefs is the same thing as being “perfectly okay” with fascist political beliefs. The issue isn’t whether or not segregation is morally “okay;” it’s what sort of means you ought to adopt in order to fight such a moral evil — in particular, whether those means should be coercive or consensual, and whether they should depend on politicians, judges and politically-appointed regulators, or whether they should be in the hands of communities and grassroots organization.

But the brave men and women who staged sit-ins at whites-only lunch counters weren’t just doing so to end government-led discrimination.

They weren’t doing it for the EEOC, either. I’m glad you appreciate the bravery of SNCC and other lunch-counter sit-in movements, but you do realize, don’t you, that libertarians have no problem with using exactly that kind of grassroots social pressure and direct action tactics in order to convince business owners that white supremacist policies are both wrong, and ultimately unsustainable? You do realize, don’t you, that many libertarians believe that it’s precisely because of these kind of tactics that the Civil Rights Movement had the revolutionary effects that it had, and that what’s needful is a great deal more emphasis on that kind of social activism, as a better alternative to governmental solutions?

When I look for the heroes of the Civil Rights movement, I certainly don’t see a bunch of grandstanding, Vietnam-bombing white politicians; I see the ordinary people who organized, boycotted, organized car pools to undercut segregated busses, marched in the streets, sang freedom songs, faced down government police dogs and firehouses, organized mass meetings, stood watch and faced down the night-riders in their neighborhoods, spoke out, sat in. I’ll be damned if I give Lyndon Banes Johnson credit for the “solutions” that they fought and died for.

Libertarians don’t hold that without government, markets or civil society would automatically “cure” everything, just by leaving it be. What we do hold is that if there is a problem with civil society, the thing to do is to change civil society, and that kind of change really only comes when it comes from within a culture. The right tools for that aren’t government laws and governmental force; they’re grassroots activism, community organizing, and building a culture of solidarity and disobedience.

There is further good discussion going on after this... of course - join in or lurk... but some good stuff going on there, I'd say. Some ignorant liberals are there defending the CRA and attacking libertarianism... whereas there are some very good and smart supporters there as well.

I feel that it's good to read and engage in such debates/discussions because it helps to keep ourselves sharp and informed, as well as giving us ammo as rebuttles we may not have thought of that we can use to help explain the position of liberty.

Enjoy!